Chris Lange, FISM News

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The lives of 2.7 million Ukrainians with disabilities stuck in the war-torn country are at serious risk. A United Nations committee said last week that it has received reports that the war has left vulnerable, disabled citizens trapped alone in their homes, care centers, and orphanages with no access to basic supplies or medicine, Reuters reports. The report was published by the Committee of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), an arm of the U.N.

“The Committee is deeply disturbed that the fate of people with disabilities in Ukraine is largely unknown,” it said in a statement sent to journalists. “People with disabilities have limited or no access to emergency information, shelters and safe havens, and many have been separated from their support networks, leaving them unable to respond to the situation and navigate their surroundings,” it continued.

The group of independent experts monitors the implementation of a 2006 international rights treaty of the U.N. created to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. Russia is among the governments that signed and ratified the concordat.

The Committee did not specify the origins of the reports it cited but noted a scarcity of people with disabilities among Ukrainian refugees or those internally displaced, “indicating that many of them have not been able to flee to safety.” 

“Some of these people with disabilities are in critical situations living in basements or perhaps living on the sixth, seventh, or eighth floor of an apartment building,” said Joni and Friends CEO Joni Eareckson Tada. Tada, along with her team and in-country partners, has orchestrated evacuations of hundreds of disabled Ukrainians to the Polish border. “They’re paralyzed. They can’t escape. They can’t rush to the border,” she said.

Tada, a well-known Christian author and radio host, became a quadriplegic following a 1967 diving accident. She founded Joni and Friends in 1979, an organization “accelerating Christian ministry in the disability community.” The ministry is currently in the process of organizing its ninth evacuation caravan to help disabled Ukrainians and their families flee the violence of the war.

According to the ministry’s website, each caravan has rescued between 50 and 60 people from “hot spots of violence” in Ukraine with the help of in-country ministry partner Galyna.

“Many of them are sad because they are leaving their country. They do not know how the situation will go,” Galyna said of the evacuees. “They don’t know how long they are going to stay there in a foreign country.”

Galyna expressed her growing concern about the fate of the evacuees if the war continues for months or even years.

 “[T]he European countries will not be able to take care of all the people with disabilities and other refugees. And that’s something that frightens me, and something that they also understand,” she said.

Galyna is driven to risk her life to help protect the most vulnerable among her fellow citizens from being harmed or exploited by the Russians.

“[W]e do not want the Russian soldiers to manipulate the people with disabilities, or to use them as shields so that our Ukrainian soldiers will not be able to protect themselves and to defend our country,” she said.

With so many disabled Ukrainians desperate to reach safety, Galyna and her team are often placed in the untenable position of having to decide who they will evacuate first. The team tries to prioritize the most vulnerable, including those with quadriplegia or cerebral palsy who are wheelchair-bound. One caravan included four autistic children.

“For the kids with autism, to hear the sound of sirens, or to hear the sound of bombings, causes panic. They are afraid because the adults are afraid,” Galyna said.

The Joni and Friends team in Poland welcomes the refugees as they cross the border from Ukraine, providing them with hot meals and hotel rooms. The ministry then arranges transportation to partners in Germany or the Netherlands for longer-term stays. 

Anna, a Joni and Friends partner in Poland, says that she has witnessed firsthand God’s faithful provision for the growing needs of the refugee community.

“God is faithful. He gives help and supplies,” she said.